


A Measure of Happiness

by Statementends (Blueberryshortcake)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Relationship, Canonical Asexual Character, Cat adoption, Domestic Fluff, M/M, The Distortion (Implied)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 16:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20294866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueberryshortcake/pseuds/Statementends
Summary: Gerry owns a bakery with his partner, Jon. Today feels like an especially good day, but there might be shadows from his former life lurking in the corners of his newfound happiness.





	A Measure of Happiness

Peace. Happiness. Love.

It was the smell of fresh bread. 

Gerry lounged in bed. The sheets warm. Gerry’s nose cold from the frosty air. Jon was pressed against him gently snoring. Gerry had his fingers tangled in his partner’s hair. 

He never thought he’d have anything close to this. 

As he watched Jon breathe in and out he caught sight of his tattoos etched onto his fingers.

He didn’t feel the tug at all while he was with Jon. The need to face monsters head on. The boredom and ennui that had come when he had tried to pull free of his mother and his old life.

Maybe it was love. Maybe there was something in Jon that satisfied the Eye that he had not devoted himself to, but found a certain level of protection from anyway. 

He chuckled to himself. Jon was bad enough in his curiosities without a dread god’s blessing. The man went through books like glasses of water. 

“You’re staring at me.” Jon’s voice was muffled by the pillow. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet. 

“You have a sweet face before you wake up that gets lost behind your general air of curmudgeonyness. 

“S’not a word.” Jon mumbled in sleepy protest.

Gerard shifted over and kissed Jon’s forehead before rolling out of the bed. Jon grumbled, cocooning himself with the warm duvet. 

“Five AM, Love.”

“Liar.”

Gerard chuckled, stripping off his sweats and nightshirt and pulling on his black jeans. 

“You can look at the clock yourself.”

“It’s cold.”

“It will be warm downstairs.” 

By the time he finished dressing and brushing his teeth Jon has finally pulled himself out of bed. 

His hair was stuck up at odd angles, a bit of drool was wet on his chin, he looked like a rumpled, exhausted pigeon. 

He loved this man. 

Gerry wandered to the kitchen while Jon went for a shower. It was bitterly cold. He put the kettle on and looked out the window. No snow. Not yet at least, but everything was wet and brown. It would be good for business. He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. That’s what you get with old places like these. The bakery downstairs was nice and warm, but the upstairs rooms were barely insulated. 

The kettle boiled. He poured the water into the mugs, threw a teabag into one and let it sit for thirty seconds before transferring it to the other letting it brew for longer. He had gained a taste for weak tea when he had been traveling with Gertrude. Maybe because they never seemed to have time to stay long in one place and it was always a rush out the door choking down hot barely steeped breakfast tea, good luck getting milk. 

He added milk to Jon’s stronger brew, and sugar into his own. Jon wandered in, no trousers yet, but thick socks and Gerry’s black jumper hanging off him, hair damp from his shower. Jon smiled seeing the tea ready for him and squeezed Gerry’s shoulder as he went by to put on toast. 

“Stay up reading did you?” Gerry asked knowingly. 

“Maria Shelby finally responded to my email and sent me her paper. It wasn’t worth the wait.”

“But you read it all.”

“Well…” Jon shrugged. “What she had to say about spiriting sightings in the 1800s was all barely patched together nonsense, but she did have a way of writing that drew me in.” 

The toast popped. Jon scrapped a bit of butter over one piece. He didn’t sit, instead leaning against the counter munching his toast and getting crumbs on Gerry’s freshly laundered jumper. Gerry smiled into his tea. 

He was oddly uplifted this morning. Basically giddy. For him anyway. 

There hadn’t been nightmares. And he had woken up with Jon beside him. That was more than he would have dreamed when he was growing up. He deserved some giddiness. 

Jon continued chewing thoughtfully. But then… he paused. Got a strange look on his face.

“What?” Gerry’s hackles automatically rose.

“Was the door always that colour?” 

Gerry turned. The door to the shared office was an off yellow that… didn’t seem entirely right, although he couldn’t quite remember what the colour might have been before.

“Did you paint it?” Jon asked.

“No…” Gerry said slowly. “It might be the cold is affecting it.”

Jon scrunched his nose. “That makes absolutely no sense.” 

“Or maybe the cigarettes you’ve been sneaking.” 

Jon straightened from his lean, his guilty face hidden by grumpiness.

“It was only one… alright I’m sorry.” He made his way to the table and sat down offering proximity as an apology. “I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. Working without access to a proper library is taxing… and doors changing colour don’t help.” Jon glared up at the door. Frowned again. Gerry looked back. It was off-white. Hm. Don’t like that. 

Gerry forced a chuckle. “It was probably the sunrise reflecting through the window. 

Jon relaxed. An explanation he could accept.

“Now, I don’t think just your pants is proper work attire.”

“It’s fine, I know the boss,” Jon said drinking down his tea. “Although it is chilly.” 

Gerry carefully watched Jon go through the bedroom door, sure that it really was their bedroom door. While Jon was pulling on trousers Gerry went to the office door. Gave it a once over. Seemed normal. Seemed fine. Maybe it really was an odd reflection. 

His gut said otherwise.

Jon appeared and they both made their way down the stairs. 

It was Monday, and maybe they were running a little behind schedule for the beginning of the week, but they could make it up. Jon beelined into the kitchen, washing his hands, checking his carefully organized sheet pans and bowls. Pulling out dough and setting things into the ovens.

Gerry wondered what his mother would have thought of Gerry owning a bakery. She would probably disapprove. Disapprove of a simple, normal life. Disapprove of the act of baking. Disapprove that Jon and he had no intentions of having children, much less Gerry having a biological child. Disapprove of their gentle happiness. 

Well. 

She never had been mother of the year. He wondered how she would feel about him being in an asexual romance with a man. Probably the nail in her coffin if she had had the decency to get put in one and stay there. She had wanted her Dynasty, but the line would end with him. He was happy with that outcome. 

Jon cracked the first egg of the day and let it fall into a little bowl. He went to the back door and placed it outside.

“Are you still trying to lure that cat?” 

Jon startled looking embarrassed at being caught despite not hiding his intentions at all.

“I’m not trying to lure anything,” he denied. He went back to the counter and started cracking eggs in earnest. 

Gerry snorted. They had been together a year. Moved in together and opened the bakery in the last six months, a venture that Gerry had been working towards for the past three years never really thinking he’d actually go all the way with it. 

He was still learning a lot about Jon. Like that he adored cats. Absolutely loved them. Went all soft and smiling. Would reach out like a kid to stroke their fur. Gerry had been thinking of getting a shelter cat for Jon when the large tabby cat had shown up in their back alley. Gerry was sure Jon had given him a name, but hadn’t heard him say it yet. 

They continued on with the business of baking. Soon the smell of fresh bread filled ever corner of the building. Every corner of his heart.

He really was being sappy today. 

Jon kneaded the bread, his long fingers accustomed to the labour involved. Gerry hadn’t known a thing about baking, but had always had his fantasies about it. Something so far away from the musty, dusty, stuffy bookshop of his youth. A dream is a bit different from reality. It was lucky he had Jon. Jon wasn’t an expert, but he was diligent with measurements and happened to have been a stress baker in college, which his flatmates and ex girlfriend had been appreciative of. Jon would have one cookie from the batch and be done with it. That was very him though. He was particular. He didn’t like the same thing over and over again. If he was hyper focused on something it would be a subject, never a specific book. He took his time enjoying the things he liked, but he would never go back to them once he was done. 

Gerry had made him a mixtape not long after they met. It was stupid. It wasn’t like people had tape players. It was all the time spent using old technology for leads. He was used to tapes. Jon had been surprised, but had taken it. Reported back that he bought an old cassette player, listened to the entire thing. Loved it. Gerry knew he still had it, carefully put away in his desk, but as far as he knew Jon had never played it more than once. He hadn’t even rewound it. 

But he had gotten to the end. That was love for Jon. Taking his slow meticulous time to enjoy a new moment letting it come to its natural conclusion. 

Gerry worried that Jon might get bored with the same routine every morning, but Jon had said: 

“It gives me time to think. And I like spending the morning with you.” 

No one had ever liked time spent with Gerry. Gerry was the person who showed up at one of the worst moments of someone’s life. A sinister character of bad luck. 

But not for Jon. 

Gerry got to work beside Jon helping to knead dough. They worked in comfortable silence. Gerry’s mind wandered to the mystery of the door. Went through protections he might enable depending on what it was. He had his suspicions. If it was the Spiral it would be tricky to protect against. The Dark might obfuscate its way to them, but he didn’t want to trade one nuisance for another. The Spiral seemed to confound the Eye. There was the Web… no. Jon was afraid of spiders. Something never spoken about, but a deep quiet fear. Jon would deal with them himself, of course. Wouldn’t ask Gerard to save him. Or anyone. Would grit his teeth, disgust to hide a small burst of terror and crush the intruder under something vindictively. 

Gerry hadn’t shared… everything he had gone through with Jon. Jon was a believer… up to a point. He knew about Leitners, that’s how they had met, but almost everything else Jon was staunchly skeptic of. He would explain everything away citing drugs, alcohol, untreated mental illness, or lies from people searching for a thrill in their boring life. Gerry knew he would have found this incredibly frustrating when he was younger. Now it was strangely comforting. Looking in the shadows Gerard always saw monsters, but the majority of the time it was just normal rats. Jon’s skepticism reminded him the powers that he had faced were rare. The only reason he had seen so many in so little time was that he had known where to look. The likelihood of running into them--well he didn’t know. Pretty low probably. He wondered if the Archives might have a statistic. 

The door was probably just a door. Sunlight reflecting off white paint. 

There was a demanding meow. Jon’s delight was all over his face. Open and visible as he left his work to go to the door. Gerry quietly followed, eavesdropping.

“Hello,  Pâtissier.” Jon cooed quietly. Hah. He knew he had named it. 

“I don’t know if Health and Safety would approve of the new Pastry Chef.” Gerry smirked.

Jon was carefully scratching under the cat’s chin. 

“He’ll keep the mice away. It is an old building.” Jon said, matter-of-fact. The cat purred. Jon had been working at him for weeks and it seemed the Pâtissier was finally accepting his job offer. “It will be easy enough to keep him out of the kitchen.” 

Gerry held up his hands. “The litter box is all yours.” 

“Fair enough,” Jon stroked the cat. “I’ll take him to the vet after work. Get him his shots, make sure he doesn’t have fleas or ticks.” 

“Speaking of fleas and ticks…” 

“Yes, right.” Jon huffed amiably. He carefully scooped the cat. The cat decided that for the moment this was fine. Jon took him upstairs. Gerry picked up the empty bowl of egg and put it in the industrial dishwasher. He thoroughly rewashed his hands. Jon came back down, sans jumper.

“I put him in the bathroom with a bit of food and water… and your jumper.”

“Why’s that?”

“He seemed to like it.”

“And it’ll be covered in fleas now.”

“Oh yes, most definitely.” Jon grinned. He washed his hands and got back to work. “Nothing hot water won’t fix, I promise.” 

“I’m holding you to it. That jumper’s comfortable.”

“Mm, yes it is. “Jon agreed.

They finished up with the dough. Checked on what was baking.

“I’m going to set up the front. Call me if you need anything.”

Jon nodded. He paused. Went on his toes and gave Gerard a tiny peck on the cheek, then proceeded back to his work. 

Gerry went pleasantly pink as he left to man the front. Jon was light with giving physical affection, but it was always there. He was a reserved man, but Gerry never felt neglected in all the time they had been together. Usually soft touches to the shoulder or wrist, but little intimate kisses when he was feeling especially affectionate. Perhaps giddiness was contagious.

He served their regular customers with extra energy, a small smile playing on his lips the entire day. He forgot about the door. 


End file.
